Add support for single audio files with embedded CUE sheets

What is the likelihood of supporting single FLAC [and other formats] files with embedded CUE sheets? It does not appear to be supported at the moment - my CD albums are appearing as a single long track.

My entire CD collection is structured in this way. Am I going to have to go through it all and slice it for Roon?

Thanks,
Simon

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You’re going to have to split them into discrete tracks. See Splitting tracks.

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+1 for single FLAC (and APE) files with CUE.

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I will add a +1 here too.

I actually rip each of my CD to a single .wav file + .cue file. This is my master image, and I have written some programs that will split to multiple WAV files in a folder per CD, based on the CUE, and optionally transcode these to MP3 for use on my phone, FLAC files for my Pono player, Etc. I also wrote a version that will convert to a single FLAC w/ embedded CUE which I sync (using the wonderful BitTorrent Sync software) to my laptop for listening on the road (wish I could take Roon with me, but my Roon Core runs on a headless server in my stereo rack)

I have heard the argument from @danny about CUE files being a defunct format with the advent of gapless playback, but I would challenge that assertion. For me, the format has several advantages:

The key advantage of single file + CUE is that the album is always held together as a single unit. I had several cases where Roon did not recognize some of my tracks for some reason, and I ended up with non-contiguous albums. I like to think of my collection as a collection of albums, not a loose collection of tracks. I do not have any partial albums in my collection, which is mostly physical discs (vinyl and CD), as well as some downloaded high-rez material. One of the things I really like about Roon is that it also focuses correctly on albums, not tracks. It would make track grouping 100% foolproof if the disc is represented by a single file on the file system.

I also like that it makes it easy to burn a new CD if I lose or damage the physical disc and need a new hard copy. Using single WAV+CUE ensures that the burned copy will be identical to the original. The exception, because I am not using .BIN files, is that I would lose any non-audio data.

One final advantage is that I do not need to consider GAP handling when ripping the CD. Many CD rippers will often append any gaps to the end of the previous track. This behaviour works well when the gap contains silence, so that when you select a track it starts playing right away and skips the gap. It becomes a problem, however, on live recorded CDs, where technically the samples contained in the GAP often belong to the following track. If you were listening to the actual CD in a CD player, the previous track would finish, and the CD player would start counting down “-00:30, -00:29, -00:28, -00:27” Etc. as it plays the intro to the track. If you were to skip directly to the track, however, it would skip the intro (Index 00) and start playing the track directly (from index 01).

I realize I am a bit OCD, but it bothers me so much that I actually wrote my own media player that can read native WAV+CUE images and behave correctly, as a CD player would. Gapless playback is inherently simple between contiguous tracks on an album, as the program streams a single file out to the audio driver (via WASAPI) and uses the CUE to determine the position/track, and closes the device when a new file (album) is selected. Obviously Roon has implemented a more complex rendering algorithm to ensure gapless playback across multiple files, so this is not an issue in Roon.

Ideally, I’d love to be able to import my single WAV+CUE+JPG images directly into Roon, but I don’t mind transcoding to single FLAC+CUE.

Much more about CUE files and gap handling here

Also, @o0OBillO0o also made a similar request, but for .BIN files, here

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@phunge, thanks a bunch for your informative post. I fully agree with your arguments and, as I mentioned earlier, I’m also a user of .cue. I’d love to see the ability to read .cue files incorporated into Roon. That + .iso support would be fantastic.

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+1 for cue support here!

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+1 for embedded cue support. (aka “BUMP!”)

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+1
please

support for cue - flac

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Hi. I’m a Squeezebox/LMS user and just joined this forum to add my support for wanting this feature. Is it added yet?

FLAC+CUE (or embedded CUE) was the feature that moved me to Squeezebox many years and and the feature that will keep me there if it’s not added in any other ecosystem. I wouldn’t consider Roon without it. Thanks.

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No response months later… Does this mean the developers don’t participate in the forum? Is there a way we can check to see what’s on the proposed feature list?

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The developers participate actively in this forum and are as open as they can be on what they are doing without creating expectations they cannot meet. See this appreciation.

Did you see the answer here that was in the link above

Roon is a small team and generally do not respond to something they have already answered unless there is something more to add. They will likely have noted your interest in this feature.

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The approach is for Roon to support the cue sheet directly. I believe this is archival grade storage of our audio CDs, which contain the catalog and ISRC code for effective ways to identify our music.

*bin/cue files stores an audio disc image composed of one cue sheet file and one or more .bin files. The .bin files are raw sector-by-sector binary copies of tracks in the original discs. These binary .bin files usually contain all 2,352 bytes from each sector in an optical disc, including control headers and error correction data in the case of CD-ROMs.

An entire multi-track audio CD may be ripped to a single audio file and a cue sheet. However, the obvious drawback is that software audio players and hardware digital audio players often treat each audio file as a single playlist entry, which can make it difficult to select and identify the individual tracks. A common solution is to split the original audio file into a series of separate files, one per track- which is currently done for ALAC/FLAC/AIFF files.

A cue sheet is a plain text file containing commands with one or more parameters. The commands usually apply either to the whole disc or to an individual track, depending on the particular command and the context. They may describe the layout of data to be written, or Metadata.*

Any consideration here along with .iso formats?

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I would LOVE to see these features incorporated into Roon: .cue and .iso support + the ability to read .ape files.

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Any commitment from Roon for .cue and .iso file support ?

All my CD rips are with a single .wav + .cue file pairs.

All my SACD Rips are .iso

I cant even consider Roon without these formats supported…

Sad …

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Not really, split the wav’s to individual tracks and while you’re at it convert them to FLAC.

Same for the SACDs.

Cue files have advantages that I refuse to give up. They retain the gaps exactly as on the original disc.

Ever heard Pink Floyd with each gap between the tracks either removed or substituted by a 2 second silence ? Same for Classical music or Opera…

Flac files are hardly the way to go for an audiophile. There is a substantial quality difference even between different FLAC encoders with the SAME lossless quality factor…

My 16/4 music is all ripped in cue + wav. . . cant compromise on that.

There is no difference between Wav and Flac if you are using Roon.

The flac files is decoded to the same wav file before it is send to the RoonBridge.

It is only if the RoonCore and RoonBridge is on the same machine you might hear a difference.

[quote=“Dinyar_Contractor, post:16, topic:1794”]Cue files have advantages that I refuse to give up. They retain the gaps exactly as on the original disc.

Ever heard Pink Floyd with each gap between the tracks either removed or substituted by a 2 second silence ? Same for Classical music or Opera…

Flac files are hardly the way to go for an audiophile. There is a substantial quality difference even between different FLAC encoders with the SAME lossless quality factor…
[/quote]You’re categorically wrong on all counts, but I suspect nobody will be able to convince you otherwise.

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I have ripped about 10000 discs to separate flacs and never had that problem. Your posting suggests that you haven’t worked out how to use your ripping software properly.

Quality difference between FLAC encoders: only if they’re broken.

You must have known that statement would start a firestorm. I will chime in and say that I have the same strong reaction that this statement is categorically incorrect.

(Let’s not re-live the nightmare of the Absolute Sound article series that argued that FLAC files sounded worse after being copied from hard drive to hard drive, among many other specious observations similar to the above statement.)

Let me suggest that you create a copy of your collection that are separate FLAC files for each track. Then tag the .WAV files in your collection as “whole albums” (or however you’d like) and also index your individual track FLAC files into Roon. Then you have the best of both worlds - you can listen to your whole albums as you’d like, but whenever you need to access an individual track, you have that option as well. Storage is cheap these days!